Iowa and Some Pretty Pictures

Lots of yackety-yak on the tubes today about Whhaaaat Ioooowwwaaa Meeeaaannns.

What I see is a lot of smoke and bother. The state-run media talking heads telling us what to think and how to vote. SSDD. And despite what the media yaps spew, the turnout in Iowa was less than stellar and does not in anyway reflect any kind of trend or surge or mandate or anything.

What really interests me are these little nuggets, complete with some pretty pictures.

Mitt Romney won, but only by 8 votes, which is the smallest margin of victory in the history of the Iowa Caucuses. But compared to the previous caucus in 2008, Romney got less votes.

But when you look at the county-by-county numbers, the picture changes.

Santorum won more rural counties, which tend to be more conservative. Romney won more urban counties, which tend to be (you guessed it!) more liberal. Romney = ObamaLite. To see the county-by-county breakdown, visit iowacacus.com and use their cool interactive map.

Basically, what this tells me is that even now, voters are still hoping for a ‘None of the Above’ option. Erick is right in that after George W. Bush left office, there was a vacumm in the GOP, top to bottom.

The Republican field was unable to reboot because we had no logical successor coming out of the White House to either win or lose. We went back to McCain and have had to work our way back through unresolved issues from 2000. And now, when the field should be rebooted, we’re having to deal with Mitt Romney who should have been displaced by an heir in 2008 and instead, because the 2008 season did not reboot the crop of candidates, is now the guy three quarters of the GOP does not want who is about to be the nominee.

Our process is chaotic because Bush left us no heir to win or to be rejected through a cathartic process of locking in gains or moving on from Bush. Yes, this one is Bush’s fault. On the bright side, the Democrats will have the same problem in 2016 unless Obama ditches Biden now for Hillary.

But that’s not the only issue the media has failed to pay attention to. There was some serious bull crap coming out of reporters’ mouths last night that is flat out false.

Read the rest. I’ll wait.

Today will be filled with media hysterics on who stays in and who gets out. (I need a clip of Charlie Brown’s teacher here.)